


quantum particles, and my heart (and yours.)

by cordiallysent



Category: Thunderbirds, thunderbirds are go
Genre: M/M, brains x virgil is the primary pairing here, brains-and-moffie's relationship is the primary concern here, this is something of a s01 e17 'heist society' retelling or...based upon...thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-03 09:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5285894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordiallysent/pseuds/cordiallysent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with Centurium 21.  </p><p>(Only it doesn't, because it started long, long before that.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the first contact

It starts with Centurium 21.

Daydream Sunshine Moffat was the daughter of hippie parents. She grew up outdoors, skimming ponds for tadpoles and learning about tiny, _wonderful_ things that make the world keep moving. She listened to folk songs about Mother Earth and the Sun and the Stars and never ever doubted it when her parents told her that there was a place for her in the world, a good place, and that in that place she would _change_ the world.

Skip forward, many years, through adolescence to the bright blue now. The same girl sits on her spinning desk chair, feet up on the seat, hugging her knees and watching, unblinking, as everything falls into place on the screen before her eyes. Her name is  _Professor_ Moffat, and something is about to happen. It’s a Big Deal, probably makes her the youngest scientist in goodness-knows-how-long to discover a shiny new quantum particle, ripe for the converting into zero point energy. When the data spits itself out of her giant glowing computer, she shrieks for a solid two minutes and attracts a small crowd, several of whom start fumbling around for paper bags when she starts hyperventilating.

Before she’s quite able to form words again, she’s reaching for her phone. The first contact in the list is _Hiram_ , due to increased correspondence over recent weeks. If not for that, _Mum_ would’ve been the first person she’d called.

“Centurium 21,” she breathes, phone shaking in her shaking hand. “It’s called _Centurium 21_.”

-

On the other end of the line, Brains struggles to put two-and-two together. He, Virgil, and MAX have been up for a record number of hours, running on fumes and wondering what on _earth_ could be stopping them from getting this new engine to work. His phone ringing knocks him out of a caffeine-crash stupor, and Virgil hardly stirs from where he’s slumped across Brains’ workstation. Brains shakes his head, taking off his glasses to rub at his eyes and maybe try to process what he’s just heard. _What’s_ called Centurium 21, now?

“Moffie?” he says, groggy. “Is that you? What’s going- what’s going on?”

He listens, but gets nothing but indistinct celebratory chatter through the phone. He picks up _research_ and _surprise_ and _oh, there go my glasses!_ and understands very little. Then he shakes himself again, and this time gets _testing_ and _quantum_ and _particle_ and _I’ve been testing and I think I’ve- well- I’ve discovered a new quantum particle!_

“Oh my goodness.” Brains says.

“Oh _your_ goodness!? Oh _my_ goodness! Oh my _goodness!_ Hiram! A new quantum particle! I’ve- I’ve discovered a new quantum particle! _Me!_ ” Moffie answers, shrill, and Brains can hear the wild grin on her face right down the connection. Virgil’s just starting to lift his head, a questioning look on his sleep-slack face. He nods along, a tired dopey grin-and-nod in response to Brains’s excited thumbs up gesture. MAX's antenna waggles a little.

“Moffie- are you serious- a-are you _sure_?”

She gives him the affirmation, and the celebration extends just a little from Switzerland to the South Pacific as Brains shouts his congratulations down the phone, all over-eager with his phone-free hand grasped tight around Virgil’s wrist. MAX turns in little circles, playing _genericfanfare.mp3_ up and out through his speakers. Virgil isn’t still _exactly_ sure what they’re celebrating, but he picks his fellow engineer right up, spins him ‘round and cranes his neck up to shout a booming ‘ _congrats professor!’_ down the phone.

Virgil keeps holding Brains up as the pair on the phone arrange plans to meet up and discuss the gravity of the situation. It isn’t as if it’s any sort of strain on him, and he patiently switches off as the Cambridge graduates talk containment and analysis and application. He only sets Brains down again when Brains ends the call and taps Virgil twice on the shoulder, still looking at the screen of his phone with a stunned sort of smile on his face.

“Good news, huh?” Virgil asks, resisting the weird urge to straighten the rumpled collar of Brains’s shirt, though of course, Brains handles that himself, still beaming.

“Very." he says. “Very, _very_ good news.”


	2. cold floor (rock ceiling)

Nothing happens on that front for a while, at least not from Virgil’s perspective. There’s life and International Rescue to be getting along with, so Centurium 21’s progress doesn’t really ever get as far as his little bubble. He does as he does – goes on rescues, engages in brother-banter, mooches by the piano, and, of course, hangs around Brains’s lab even when he’s not been asked to.

Brains has never complained though, or asked him to buzz off, so he take this as a _keep doing what you’re doing, kid_. Besides, Brains never actually _invites_ anyone down there. You sort of have to take initiative, if you ever want to see the guy outside of a ‘the world needs saving and we’re all gathered round the coffee table’ type situation.

And Virgil does want to see him. In a strictly – _he’s an engineer, I’m an engineer, I could learn a lot from him_ kind of sense. Obviously.

 

It’s a Saturday night, and the day’s rescue had required the standard Team Big Brother fare. It’s already fading into the safe haze of a job well done in Virgil’s mind, so the only thing to really think about is the latest Team Engineer project.

Actually, it’s more of Brains-and-MAX project, Virgil’s just sitting in, watching Brains race from one end of TB1’s hangar to the other, throwing things to MAX and _just_ about managing to catch them when they’re thrown back. Brains clearly has no stamina, but he does have an absurd amount of enthusiasm, and despite looking ready to pass out, he continues the weird game of spanner-toss for a further five minutes before he _really_ starts to look ragged.

Virgil thinks this whole thing is pretty funny. Not _ha-ha_ funny, maybe more on the side of ‘weird but endearing’ funny. And there are lots of things that Virgil finds weird but endearing about Brains - like his penchant for tweed in a tropical climate, or the fact that he has a different pair of glasses for every day, or the way he _scurries_ around his workshop.

“Brains, I’m sure there’s a damn good, totally _scientific_ reason for all this cardio you’re doing, but I think you oughtta take a break.”

Brains near-misses a flying water pistol, fumbling for it and catching it with his elbows. He considers what Virgil’s saying with a serious, thoughtful expression, tosses the water pistol back to MAX, and then, very slowly, he sinks to the floor.

Forehead to concrete, he mumbles something about not even being sure what he was testing for in the first place. Virgil laughs, and drops to the floor beside him. They go from weird hunched over crouches to lying on their backs, looking up at the high, rocky ceiling of the silos. The floor’s not exactly comfortable, but they’re reasonably at ease, even with MAX deciding to circle the pair of them like a shark. Virgil’s not sure what that’s about.

He turns his head, looks at the guy lying next to him. Brains is all unfocused-eyes, staring into not-space, mouth moving, words he’s not actually saying playing on his lips.

Virgil wonders what’s going on in that head of his.

“Say, Brains?”

“Brains.”

Brains turns his head too, meeting Virgil’s eyes with raised brows and a smirk. Virgil snorts.

“Sorry, sorry. I _did_ pick up on that questioning inflection, I promise I’m not that hopeless. What’s- what’s _up_?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I- Actually, I was gonna ask what _you_ were thinking about.”

“I was thinking about quantum particles. Y-you remember a few months ago, I had that phonecall from Moffie- That is- Professor Moffat- and she t-told me she’d discovered a new one? A new quantum particle?”

 “Oh yeah. How’s that going?"

“Mm. Very well, I think. When I was with her last, we-we’d finished creating a containment unit of sorts- it was really more like a _super-briefcase_ , b-but it’s not as if- you know- it’s not as if the particle was enormous or anything. Just…enormously important. She took it to Global Defence, I haven’t actually heard anything more on the subject since then.”

Brains stretches his arms up over his head, points his fingers up toward the ceiling.

“I spend a _lot_ more time lying on the floor than I’ve ever realised before. I-I think I’m only about half as productive as I m-make myself out to be.”

“Oh, you do this a lot, huh?”

“Usually when I’ve fallen off something. Such is the o-o-occupational hazard when you test all your rocket boots and- the like yourself.”

Virgil doesn’t really have a response, and expects that this is where the conversation will end, and Brains will decide that this has been a long enough break, and that he needs to get back to work. He expects this, but instead, Brains lowers his arms, rests his hands on his stomach and kicks vaguely out in MAX’s direction. He misses, because MAX is about a metre out of Brains’ reach, but the little robot snaps to attention anyway, even raising an arm to shake an indignant clawed fist.

“MAX,” he says. “Compile that motion and tracking data and transfer it b-back to my terminal. Let’s…let’s call that a highly successful test of your ability to catch things while running, and my ability to miss most of them, a-also while running.”

MAX gives a chirp and rolls away, leaving Brains and Virgil to their lying on the floor. It’s cold, but that’s not unwelcome, given how hot a day it’s been. They’re lying pretty close together. Their elbows are touching. Virgil is _very_ aware of this. Brains isn’t wearing his usual tweed, just a plain blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up - and Virgil’s only in a T-shirt. The tiny point of bony contact is warm against the cold of that floor.

“Virgil?”

“Yeah?”

“What are _you_ thinking about?”

Virgil hopes he hasn’t suddenly started blushing, because he doesn’t want to say something lame like _this_ and _how nice whatever ‘this’ is_ so he shrugs and says;

“Uh- I was thinking… sit-up competition?”

It’s Brains’ turn to let out an involuntary snort of laughter, and Virgil’s glad of it, but he presses the sit-up-off all the same, because, hey, something to do while lying on the floor. He even manages to get Brains to do about half a sit-up, and Brains grumbles something about P.E. lesson flashbacks and the absolute _horror_ of P.E. lesson flashbacks. Half a sit-up is really all Brains is going to be able to do, though, so Virgil wins the competition, and when they collapse back onto the floor, fingers pressed to each other’s forearms, stomachs aching with laughter – Virgil thinks that maybe he has won/he will win (someday) something else, something better.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: i've already written 90% of the ending to this fic, and like, barely anything else. hell yeah!


	3. careful observation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i don't really know what a symposium is, so in my head, and how its gonna play out is that like, it's a nerd party.
> 
> this chapter's mostly kayo. whenever i include kayo in things, i am always trying to reconcile her with tin-tin. you know. bridge the gap between the two vastly different portrayals of 'miss kyrano', from TOS to TAG.

The update on the Centurium 21 situation is as follows: the GDF help Professor Moffat to contain her discovery, and, with the help of some experts, she pinpoints a way it can be used to benefit humankind. Lady Penelope steps in, assuring everyone she can use her near-divine influence to get this thing to the best kind of people.

There’s going to be Symposium – and Kayo’s read up enough to know it’s going to be a gathering of Brains-minded people and they’re all going to be presenting their findings, pooling together into this big mixing pot of intelligence, hoping to come out with something good at the end.

Lady Penelope encourages Professor Moffat to attend. Professor Moffat wavers and pleas stage fright. Brains nudges the Professor, just a little, and she caves. Therefore, Brains will be attending the event as Moffie's personal moral support section. Kayo will be attending as Brains's bodyguard, and, by extension, Professor Moffat's bodyguard, but for the sake of play-acting, and just because Brains cannot help but indulge Miss Kyrano – officially, they are attending as a wealthy couple. Investors. Not necessarily married, so rings optional. False moustache: very optional.

 

It’s the day before Brains and Kayo are set to leave the island. Kayo sits with Gordon and Alan at the dining table, and she’s not paying much attention to the blond-headed pair. She’s watching Brains and Virgil, just casually, out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye type stuff.

On the one hand, it’s kind of adorable. Virgil is two-hundred pounds of intimidating-looking muscle, and he’s _blushing_ , come over all bashful after a two minute talk with the island’s resident engineer.

On the other hand, it’s pretty embarrassing, because he’s two-hundred pounds of muscle, blushing after a two minute talk with the island’s resident engineer.

Kayo has known him for long enough to know his ‘type’. That type, so far, has seemed to be his fellow artists. If they’re girls, then they’re ethereal, fairy-like women, and if they’re guys, then they’re men not unlike himself; strong, artistic - musicians more often than not. _Brains_ is not his type – not that she wants to pigeonhole him or anything, but she just isn’t sure where Virgil’s crush has come from.

It’s going to take some careful observation.

They’re talking. Brains is leant against one of the kitchen countertops, and he pushes up at the corner of his frames, sliding them back into place in one absent-minded motion. He’s telling Virgil about the latest research paper he’s read, quietly stuttering his way through the end of a sentence – and Virgil looks _enraptured_. He leans in, clearly hanging on every thickly accented word. It’s honestly kind of incredible, the way he goes all doe-eyed – and the best part is that Brains doesn’t even _notice_. Apparently neither does Virgil.

It feels sort of like she shouldn’t be watching. They’re so close, heads bent toward one another; Kayo’s surprised Virgil hasn’t just gone in for the kiss. If she held up her phone and turned on a rose-tinted filter, the scene going on a few feet from her could have come straight out of a sappy romance.

Kayo tears her eyes away, tries to tune back into the conversation she was having with Alan and Gordon. It’s hard to do, because they’re going on about something ridiculous and she’s pretty sure they’re not even speaking _English_ at this point. Brains and Virgil are firmly on the brain, but she has to keep her spying that _little_ bit subtle. Covert operations, and all.

So she devotes a good 30% of her attention to Team Little Brother’s talk on ‘the worst ever potato chip flavours’. It’s 30% more than they honestly deserve.

When Brains leaves the room, she notices, just out of the very furthest corner of her eye, that he touches Virgil’s arm, a casual ‘goodbye, see you later’ gesture, and Virgil smiles so _ridiculously_ brightly that Kayo’s heart actually kind of hurts to see it. This is all so embarrassing.

She goes ‘round the back of the kitchen setup and parkours it right over the top of the counter, scares Virgil out of his stupor with a hard poke to his side.

“Virgil,” Kayo starts. “I _cannot_ believe how transparent you are.”

Virgil’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second, but he covers it up with his best innocent ‘I don’t know what you could _possibly_ mean’ face. Kayo’s not buying it. Besides – only Alan can still make that puppy pout work. Gordon, at a push.

“You actually _fancy_ Brains?” She asks, pushing her finger further into his side. There’s not a lot of give. The guy is solid as a rock. Virgil looks down, red-faced and guilty, which says it all, of course.

A look into that head of his, and he wants to come clean, and say _of course I do, I like everything about him._ He wants to, but he _doesn’t_ , at the same time, because he expects nothing short of disapproval from Kayo. No romantic relationships in the workplace, or something. Would it be considered fraternising? Brains _does_ live in the house with them. He’s basically family - though that scores Virgil no points on the ‘it’s okay to have a crush on this guy’ front.

So he doesn’t say anything, and Kayo’s fingernail starts to pinch at his flesh. Virgil Tracy is wilting under the pressure, so he opts to just nod. Nod, and hope that’ll satisfy Miss Kyrano, and he can go back to comfortably saying nothing to Brains about just how endearing it is when he adjusts his glasses or fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt or laughs at a bad pun.

Kayo considers Virgil’s response with pursed lips and a deliberately withering stare, before she retracts her poking finger and rolls her eyes - but she smiles all the same.

“Oh my god.” She says, leaning her head on his shoulder, a patented Kayo Kyrano half-laugh leaving her lips. “Virgil, that’s _adorable_. You- that’s adorable.”

“Do you think he knows?” Virgil asks, fingers rubbing idly at his arm, skin still remembering the brief press of Brains’s fingers against it.

“No,” Kayo says. “He can’t see through those glasses of his. I think you’d have to literally spell it out to him.”

“I don’t think he’d believe me, honestly. Besides, I don’t even know if he likes guys! I saw him with that Professor at the Collider, I don’t know… I guess I kind of assumed they had a fling?”

Kayo doesn’t miss the way his tone turns sort of sour on the word _Professor_ , and she has to stifle another chuckle. Virgil has himself so _convinced_. Aren’t the Tracy’s supposed to be known for their will to make it happen?

“Virgil, _please_ , trust me. Brains is definitely into you. Or, at the very least, I am sure he swings that way, because I caught him admiring a beefcake last time I bullied him onto the mainland.”

“He admires beefcakes? I’ve never seen him admire anything that wasn’t made of metal and capable of breaking the sound barrier.”

Kayo taps at her temple. “I’ve got a sharp eye.”

Virgil looks thoughtful for a moment.

“Was he actually _admiring_ this so-called beefcake, or was he just sort of, I dunno, looking at the guy’s jeans ‘cause he wanted a pair for himself or something?”

“Pretty sure Brains does not own a single pair of jeans, he doesn’t seem like a jeans-wearing person. And anyway, _no_ , he was _not_ just looking at the jeans. And the guy was wearing shorts. It was all very revealing, and Brains was _definitely_ checking him out.” Kayo says, taking a moment to inspect the chipping polish on her nails. “It’s up to you what you do, Virgil. I can’t honestly say how it’ll go, but what do you have to lose?”

“His friendship and the last remaining shred of dignity that I’ll have once this conversation is over, maybe?”

Kayo snorts, patting Virgil on the shoulder as she makes to leave.

“You won’t lose his friendship. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I still need to pack, for tomorrow.”

“Huh? Why, where are _you_ going?”

“I’m going with him. To that Symposium, or whatever it was. He needs a bodyguard. And _no_ , he couldn’t have taken you. Thunderbird Two might be called into action.”

Virgil mumbles something about not wanting to be a bodyguard anyway. Kayo smiles as she turns and walks away.

“I’ll bring him back safe, don’t worry. By then, I’m sure you’ll have worked up the nerve to tell him.”

Height of maturity, Virgil sticks his tongue out at her back. Apparently all of this is making him sink down to Gordon’s level. Figures.


	4. pretend girlfriends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and so end the chapters where i've already written stuff that i can just rejig and fit into the overall plan i've got for this fic. dang! now i actually have to use my brain.
> 
> the characters in this chapter are brains, moffie, and kayo. virgil will be back soon. my plan does not include as much of him as it really should - i need to correct that.

It’s not iR business, or at least, not close enough to warrant them taking Air Thunderbird, so Brains and Kayo take ‘regular people transport’ to the symposium. They pack suitcases and Kayo waits patiently for Brains to say his (unnecessarily long) goodbyes to MAX. They get on an automated ferry to the mainland, and continue on to the airport from there. 

Kayo keeps a hold of Brains by the elbow, firmly pulling him along through lines for luggage check right to boarding, refusing to allow for his second thoughts. And he is having many of them – second thoughts, and thirds, even fourths.

(See, the night before leaving, everything seemed alright. Brains already had everything he’d need packed – and then backup essentials, in case somebody needed extra. You can never have too much mouthwash, because mouthwash has a lot of secondary uses. Brains has a list of these uses on his phone. It goes: Nail Fungus Eradicator, Poison Ivy Treatment, Mosquito Repellent, Plant Rescue, etc, etc. He'd made sure the list was still in its proper virtual folder before turning out the lights.

Then, for once, he’d got into bed and had a proper night’s sleep – and everything was okay, ‘til he had a dream about a shady figure with a hologram for a face.)

Something is going to go _wrong_ , he can feel it – and this isn’t just nerves talking, because, despite his outward presentation – Brains is not a pessimist. He does not _expect_ things to go wrong. He works on a principle of firm belief, and, in any other situation, expects that everything is going to go reasonably according to plan. Expects that people will work toward the best outcome, that everyone hopes for the same sort of progress he does.

But then that shady figure, the one from his dream, the one with a hologram for a face – that person had tampered with Brains’ technology – and the whole mess; it leaves Brains not _quite_ as sure of himself. Or anyone else, for that matter.

-

Brains and Kayo get to their seats, and the plane takes off. Brains is alternately okay with flying, then decidedly _not_ okay with flying. Factors tend to include: the craft he’s in, the speed it’s going, the intended destination, and whether or not there are crying children aboard. And anyway, his (extremely mild) agoraphobia tends to have him in jitters, it’s just the way. He doesn’t get out of the house much.

“Brains,” Kayo whispers, placing her hand on top of his, stilling the frantic twitching of his fingers. “What’s wrong?”

He turns to her, eyes widening at the contact, and shrugs, hoping to seem nonchalant. Kayo frowns, (and she seems to do that _so often_ , dealing with him,) but she says nothing, turning back to her in-flight movie.

The flight passes in an uneasy few hours, but no disaster befalls them. They book into a shared hotel room, to keep up the thin and somewhat pointless cover as a couple, but Kayo assures Brains that she’ll take the couch. Brains has already made up his mind that _he’s_ going to take the couch, so they um and ahh about it for a good few minutes before deciding to settle it with a round of rock-paper-scissors (lizard-spock expansion still up in the air) when they get back after the first part of the symposium/conference ordeal is over and done with.

They’re still negotiating the terms of their deciding game when Brains’ phone buzzes in his pocket. He fumbles with it, scrambling to hold it to his ear while Kayo watches, the tiniest smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth. She’s glad to see he’s still using the Nitrogen-Erbium-Dysprosium phone case she’d bought him last year.

She picks up Brains’ half of the conversation. It goes; _Hello?—Yes, I I just got here—No, Kayo is with me—She’s—Yes, that’s her _—_ Oh no, only her _—_ Well, _because _, that’s why! _—_ And where are you? _—_ Are you—Are you coming to f-find me? _—_ I’m on the seventh floor _—_ Why don’t I just meet you in the lobby? _—_ Yes? Yes, so you can meet her _—_ Alright. S-see you very soon, Moffie._

Brains ends the call, slips the phone back into his pocket. Kayo quirks an eyebrow.

“Come on, then.” Brains says, opening the door and offering his arm, second nature, old-fashioned and gentlemanly, something left from lessons learned with Lady Penelope, very, very long ago. Kayo’s smile widens a barely-perceptible fraction, and she takes his arm, falling in step beside him.

“So what’s she like then? This lab partner of yours?”

“Oh, insufferable.” Brains responds, fond. “She’s brilliant, a-a brilliant scientist. You all call me _Brains_ , but I-I’m absolutely nothing on her. You know, she’s younger than I am. Which – well, I think she’s a little older than you, but the point i-is that she was a prodigy, as a child, more so than I was. She s-sort of makes me look like an idiot, actually.”

“I _doubt_ that, Brains.”

“Well,” he says, grinning. “I s-suppose you might not tell from the way she acts, b-but if you compared our grades.”

They step into a lift, and it whooshes down, some-seconds-flat. There’s an elderly couple in there with them, both of whom grip the rail to steady themselves. Brains-and-Kayo smile (awkwardly and entirely sweetly) at the couple, who return the smiles, even both throwing in a little wave of the hand in the kind of sync that comes with spending decades together.

“The lobby, then?” Kayo says, as they exit the lift, both of them keeping a hand on a sliding door each, to keep the lift from shutting the elderly couple in. Only when all four passengers have departed does Brains nod.

They get halfway to the lobby before Moffie finds them. They hear a cry of _Hiram_ , Brains’ ‘public’ name, and then they both turn to see a young woman power-walking toward them, the hem of her skirt swishing neatly around her knees.

This is the first time Kayo has ever encountered the woman Gordon’s been calling ‘Brains’ Girlfriend’ – she missed out, that time at the Hadron Collider. All Kayo’s really heard about her so far has been from the Gordon Tracy Gossip Channel, and that’s not been much more than ‘Girl-Brains’. _You know, wears glasses, is maybe Asian? Not the same kind of Asian as Brains, though. Irish accent. Pretty cute actually, and I’m usually not that into geeks. Okay- hey-_ yes _\- you could say I am Lady-Penelope-sexual. God, do_ not _tell her I said that. Kayo! Oh my God._

Kayo’s now got a chance to build on that weird bit of description. At first glance: Gordon’s description isn’t really that far off. A woman in her mid to late twenties, in a black and white blouse-and-skirt combo. Red Cats-Eye glasses on her face, a cute bun hairstyle with a freshly cut box fringe only serving to make her look younger, sweeter - and she looks young and sweet anyway.

“Hello, Moffie,” Brains says, as she pulls him into a hug. Kayo notices that Brains responds to the hug with tremendous awkwardness, arms pinned to his sides, fingers extended, shoulders hunched right up - he’s not actually hugging the Professor back, but the smile on his face is genuine. He’s just really bad at hugging. This is pretty much his standard reaction.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Moffie says, pulling back, holding onto him with her arms straight out, like she’s admiring him. “I know it hasn’t been that long since the last time, but, _honestly_ , I do miss you when we’re apart for longer than five minutes. How did we ever manage _four years_? _”_

She beams, and then turns to Kayo, throwing an expectant glance back up at Brains.

“Oh! Yes. Professor Moffat, this is Kayo Kyrano, who is…my pretend girlfriend, at least for today? O-officially, she’s my bodyguard, b-but we must keep it hush-hush. No-one needs to know I’m a celebrity.”

Kayo smiles, rolling her eyes at Brains’ ridiculous introduction and extends her hand, which Moffie shakes, politely.

“It’s nice to meet you, Professor.”

“Oh! Moffie’s fine.” She shrugs, sheepish, pushing up her glasses (totally Girl-Brains, except she pushes from the bridge, not the edge of her frames.) “Not my first name, but you’d prefer your surname too if your parents named you _Daydream Sunshine._ ”

Kayo nods, because what can she say, really? Kayo's very familiar with avoiding her first name. Moffie turns back to Brains. She really turns; she makes a point of doing a little pivot.

“Come on, you two. Let’s go the cafe and catch up. I’m dying for a latte and we haven’t got anywhere to be for a good while. Shall we?”

Moffie reaches for Brains’ hand, and, to Kayo’s surprise, easily, he links his fingers with hers. And oh, Kayo _so_ much wants to goad him about it, tease him with something like ‘ _going to hold my hand too, pretend boyfriend?’_ but she holds it back and loops her arm through his anyway.

A girl on each arm, he must look like quite the ladies’ man. If only people knew.


	5. this is just filler.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just....just bear with this one, alright? just bear with me here.

Kayo takes her coffee black, because she doesn’t really drink coffee. She’s a coffee poser, and _apparently_ to take your coffee black is to look tough and to laugh in the face of danger and all of the other things she assumes you have to do to keep up the appearance of someone that deserves the title of ‘badass’.

Bitter bean juice. That’s what she’s drinking. It’s hideous. She regrets it entirely, especially when she sees what the others get. Brains-and-Moffie order identical toffee-flavoured caffè lattes, both dumping one sugar in, stirring, tasting, wincing, adding another sugar, taste-testing again, and then nodding, totally seriously to one another before deeming their drinks to be satisfactory. Kayo thinks this incredible, and incredibly nerdy, and she starts to wonder just who it is that would be Brains’ perfect match.

She wants to see her pretend boyfriend happy, after all.

“So you two were lab partners?” Kayo asks. They’re sat opposite her, and it feels sort of like she’s on a date. Less of a third wheel, more like she’s decided to go out with a two-headed monster. Team Cambridge-Graduate nod their heads.

“We were indeed! Any opportunity to stick together while we were students – and even after! At least for a little bit.” Moffie looks to Brains, momentary-wistful-look-in-her-eyes. “At least, until you met Mr Tracy.”

Brains winces, and Moffie giggles, gently knocking into him with a sway of the shoulders. Brains follows the motion through, returns her shoulder-bump with about half as much gusto, because he’s holding his drink and he’s trying _very_ hard not to spill it. Moffie doesn’t notice; she’s already turned back to Kayo.

“We…sort of latched onto one another from when we first met… Well. I latched onto him. Didn’t you find me really _annoying_ , Hiram?”

Brains splutters, offended, denies this vehemently. While he’s doing his spluttering, Moffie launches into the long and detailed tale of how the Hackenbacker-Moffat alliance was first formed. Brains stays mostly silent, shifting uncomfortably whenever Moffie brings up something embarrassing – and these embarrassing mini-anecdotes make up about half of the overall story. Kayo listens, leant right forward over the table, miserable beverage forgotten.

There’s somebody else leaning/listening in, too. He’s got a hologram for a face – but of course, no-one notices.

-

Back home, Virgil comes in after a job not- _so_ -well done. Done well enough. Still a bit pink in the middle. No casualties, but a bit of difficulty with the press. Nothing John can’t handle. For Virgil, the hard part’s over, and he’s free to mope and slope and generally mooch around, wondering what to do with himself.

Grandma’s in the kitchen, and morbid curiosity has him enter. The fear is only somewhat alleviated when he notices MAX happily assisting, whisk attachment busily turning eggs/flour/sugar/etc. into something useful.

“Hey, Grandma.”

“Hey yourself, kid. What’s going on, you have a fever? Caught something out there? Don’t tell me you came in here _willingly_?” Grandma says, peering up at Virgil over the frames of her glasses. The lenses are totally covered in flour. Normally, Virgil would think that would probably make things more difficult, but something tells him Grandma’s probably doing better blind than she would if she could actually see what she was doing.

Well, she can see now. It’s unnervingly like she can see into Virgil’s soul – he looks helplessly to MAX, who simply continues whisking. He doesn’t even blink his little handlebar-eyelids. The jerk. No help at all.

“Oh. I get it.” Grandma says, smile going all coy. “Now’s your usual ‘go and sit in the lab pretending to be paying attention to whatever a _certain someone_ is working on’ time slot, isn’t it?”

“Hey, I pay attention, Grandma.”

Grandma winks. “I _know_.”

Virgil sighs. He rolls back his sleeves, washes his hands, and steps in where MAX was, taking the mixing bowl. MAX bows out gracefully, scooting around to the other side of the island counter to go sift through different packets of chocolate chips.

“Virgil,” Grandma says, taking off her glasses to wipe them on her apron. “How long has this been going on for, now?”

Virgil shrugs. He’s not actually sure. He knows the slight shift in his feelings probably hasn’t come about overnight, but it’s difficult to pinpoint. Grandma rolls her eyes, then rolls out pastry.

-

Kayo’s ‘date’ ends when Professor Moffat proposes a detailed run-through of her presentation to Professor Hackenbacker. They’ll be headed to one of the empty auditoriums, and Kayo’s got some wandering about aimlessly to be doing, so she tells them to go on ahead, she’ll meet up with them later. The three of them get up, 2/3 coffee cups drained. A handsome young man in a slate-grey suit accidentally knocks into Moffie as she and Brains turn to leave. The man apologises, and Moffie brushes the bump off with a smile, pulling Brains away by the hand.

The man smiles at Kayo, and a shiver runs down her spine. She returns the smile, terse and with none of the warmth the guy’s trying to project. Then she nods, just-barely-polite, and walks away.

-

And back over the ocean, back to Virgil, who's still hard at work, thinking on his sort-of-almost-relationship with Brains.

See, Brains is older than Virgil. Not _excessively_ older, but probably pushing thirty to Virgil’s twenty-five. Virgil isn’t really sure. He doesn’t actually know how old Brains is really is. Or when his birthday is. Virgil realises, dimly, sitting staring at the TV (infomercials as far as the eye can see) that the guy he thinks of as his _maybe_ closest friend is still kind of a mystery to him.

When they’d first met, Virgil had still been something of a kid. He’d still had half-baked plans about striking out on his own and making a name for himself as a singer-songwriter with a hipster beard and a guitar and a road crew. Those first few years, when Virgil was still struggling to come up with a plan for his life, Brains wasn’t any sort of important factor. Brains was just this skinny Indian dude that sometimes showed up at Casa Tracy to talk to Dad about aerospace engineering. Before Virgil had finally caved, decided that, yeah, the family business was an okay sort of choice to make – he and Brains had probably exchanged a grand total of about 150 words, tops.

Somewhere between the then and the now, they become friends. And somewhere in _that_ somewhere, Virgil falls.

(Before he can get to more musing, the egg timer goes off and Virgil all but dives for the oven door.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lab partner:
> 
> When you're going out with someone but you're in that awkward stage where you are transitioning from best friends to boyfriend/girlfriend. You basically are afraid to even touch each other. Don't fret, soon you'll be making out and all of your other friends will yell at you for PDA.
> 
> "Dude, you guys are so awkward"
> 
> "Don't worry, we're just being lab partners."
> 
> (from urban dictionary. again, i don't ship brains and moffie romantically, and that's not the aim of this story, but when kayo asks 'are you lab partners', she's thinking of this definition. brains and moffie don't know this.)


	6. a proper assessment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> its a brains and moffie party! get ready for some characters who are too old to have schoolkid crushes, but are having them anyway. well, one is. the other one's just excited.

Audience of one. Professor Moffat clicks her button one last time, and the presentation ends. The holograms disappear and it’s just her on the stage, shrinking without her projections. Still, hopeful, she peers out into the brightly lit seating to gauge Professor Hackenbacker’s reaction.

His face is a carefully controlled mask of seriousness, which he manages to hold up for a grand total of maybe six seconds before he finds himself totally unable to fight back the grin. He applauds; he gets up out of his seat and he shimmies his way down the row to get to the end. Moffie meets him halfway, hopping down off the stage and dashing to close the distance, grabbing hold of his hands in both of hers, squeezing tight.

“So it’s okay?” She asks, urgent, still shaky with nerves. “Nothing I should change? Add?”

“Nothing at all! It’s perfect.” Brains responds, easy.

“Are you _sure_? You don’t think I could include more about conversion methods? Or- or maybe I should include more atom model displays! Or—”

“Moffie, I am very sure. I am entirely and _quite_ sure. Th-this is—You have everything under control.”

“Oh,” Moffie says, beaming, squeezing his hands just a little tighter. “You’re just saying that.”

Brains scoffs, does a little upward shake of the head, hoity-toity gesture.

“Never! I never ‘just say’ anything. I’m not in the business of going r-round telling people things that aren’t true. Or- at least- I try. Moffie,” he says, mock-surly expression leaving his face, back to the grin of thirty seconds ago. He pulls his hands free, sets them on her shoulders. “You have everything under control.”

Then he thinks, _wait_. And he remembers the dream he had, and Moffie does not miss the look that passes over his face as something she can’t see plays before his eyes.

“Hiram?”

He snaps out of it. “Yes?”

“Something wrong?”

_Yes_. _I had a bad dream and now I’m worried a meddlesome man who likes to operate under a silly supervillain handle is going to come along and try and sabotage your work and discredit you in the scientific world and have you worry, daily, about the projects you undertake and the work you produce._

He manages not to say this out loud. He thinks; _that’s preposterous, we’d know. Nothing is going to go wrong. The world is still the way I had thought it to be. If something were to happen…we’d know. Wouldn’t we?_

“Moffie,” Brains says, easing himself into one of the seats. Moffie sits down next to him, her knees bumping into his. Brains steadies himself, focuses on his hands. “I’m going to stay in the wings while you d-do your presentation. I just want to be there. To be sure that you’re- that you’re safe.”

Moffie’s face twists, she frowns, leaning back.

“Safe? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just- I just had a feeling. A feeling that we ought to…e-exercise caution.”

“A _feeling_? Hiram,” Moffie says, folding her arms, quirking an eyebrow. “We are people of _science_! I’ve never known you to be a ‘go with your gut’ guy.”

Brains scowls. “I’m new to it, but it worked surprisingly well the last time.”

Moffie sighs, but she bows to it.

“Okay, sure. I’d _rather_ have you front and centre, preferably with cheerleader pom-poms, but a moral support squad from just offstage will work too. You can be my bodyguard!” She says, eyes lighting up. “I can sing the Whitney song! _And I—eee-eye-- will always love you--_ ”

Brains claps a hand over her mouth before she can get to further wailing. “Please, Moffie! For the sake of my eardrums, not to mention the eardrums of everyone else in the building! No Whitney!”

He releases her, chuckling as she tries to hit him around the head, her touch feather-light, barely brushing the ends of his hair.

“Well, you _do_ already have a bodyguard. Kayo. If she’s my bodyguard, that makes her your bodyguard b-by proxy.” Brains says, batting Moffie’s hands away.

“Oh yes! Surly-but-surprisingly-pretty-when-she-smiles girl! She’s _lovely,_ Hiram. I want very badly to become her best friend, so much so that I might have to _not_ callously steal you away from her. Or, pretend steal, if you’re only in a pretend relationship.”

“I’m sure she’ll be relieved.”

“I _do_ have a question, though.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you bring _her_ , and not that lovely _Virgil_ I’m always hearing about?”

Had he a drink, Brains would have spluttered it out everywhere. It’d have been the spit-take to end all spit-takes, and he wishes he could do it, just to distract from this, the conversation he’d absolutely _not_ wanted to have.

For the record: he thinks he’s being quite subtle about his crush. In their scheduled fortnightly video-chats, Brains and Moffie tend to talk shop, exchange notes on research and recommend recorded lectures to one another. Sometimes they talk about other things, lighter topics – weird lunches and new fashion trends and pets and TV and ‘fancyable’ colleagues. Brains isn’t particularly open about his day-to-day, but Moffie hears tail-ends of his personal life. Occasionally, she’ll pick up on another man’s voice in the background of their calls, or just briefly see someone wave goodbye to Brains on the video feed, just as iR’s engineer switches the focus of his attention. She catches just-in-the-corner-of-the-frame glimpses of a guy with black hair and broad shoulders in the background of Brains’ social media updates – boring nerd projects he posts on a blog only five people follow – and Moffie is two of them, under two different usernames. She picks up just little bits and pieces of her best friend’s ‘other life’, and this is what she treasures.

So here’s what she knows about this ‘Virgil’.

He’s a boy. A young man. She assumes; a handsome young man, if Brains’ awkward blush is anything to go by. He is an engineer, and an _artist_. He plays piano and guitar and he can ‘bench press twice his weight’, whatever that means. He has brown eyes and he’s the only one of Mr. Jeff Tracy’s sons that Brains’ helper robot seems to actively like.

He is _absolutely_ her Hiram’s crush, and she hasn’t _nearly_ got enough information to process just whether or not he’d be good boyfriend material yet. She’d been sort of hoping that he’d have been Brains’ bodyguard, (from what she can gather, he certainly qualifies for poretction duty) so that she might have been able to gather more data. Create a proper assessment.

At this rate, she’s going to have to stowaway on Brains’ return flight, and do her recon mission covert.

“ _Well_?” Moffie presses, nudging Brains’ knee with her own. “Why didn’t you?”

“He’s part of a team of highly-elite rescue o-operatives who are on call _pretty much_ all the time. He is probably the most invaluable of these operatives, so I absolutely couldn’t drag him away from what could be a serious s-situation just so I could bring a date.”

“A _dateI!_ ” Moffie squeals. Brains regrets his wording immediately, and wishes very much that the auditorium seating might just swallow him up. He doesn’t even bother trying to fight it, Professor Moffat has officially got herself the confirmation she needs. Brains just slumps forward, head between his knees like he’s trying not to be sick.

She bullies him about the whole situation for the next three hours, and Brains takes some comfort in the fact that, at the very least, it’s distracting her from being nervous about her presentation.

Doesn’t stop him being nervous, though. He’s nervous enough for both of them.


	7. just a little self-conscious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this one involves -gene belcher voice- GIRLS BEING GIRLS BEING GIRLS BEING GIRLS

The Man With A Hologram For A Face sets his plan into motion. The Professor who discovered the Centurium 21 particle gives her presentation, and she gives it well. The man is impressed. She’s done all the hard work for him! Everyone is going to want this power. He is going to give it to them – for the right price, of course.

The particle is in a little briefcase, and the man has everything he needs to take it. He has the Professor’s fingerprints, and he has her _face_.

He wears it to greet her. And she goes- ‘ _what? What is this?’_ like they all do. This is a very tired scene, but it’s necessary.

He hides her away quickly.

-

Kayo had run into Penny on her ‘aimless wander’. She hadn’t realised, at first, because Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward is very good at blending in when she wants to.

Today, she’s Sophia Brown, in a black bob and a very convincing beauty spot. A French twang to her accent – she’s an investor too. Kayo laughs as they exchange cover stories – _great minds think alike!_ – and she wishes she’d picked out a wig too. Lady Penelope is absolutely showing her up, fake-identity-wise.

Parker is with her, in a disguise of his own. It’s not a particularly good one. He’d just decided not to shave for the week, and the half-grown beard is what he’s counting on to mask his identity. He’s off to the side, cracking his knuckles and looking vaguely threatening, but keeping far enough away that the ladies can exchange notes without having to listen to the sound of his popping joints.

“So what do you think of Professor Moffat?” Penny asks, swiping through a list of notable presentations on her phone. Kayo lifts an eyebrow.

“Are we gossiping?”

“We’re assessing.”

“Which factors? She certainly seems like she knows what she’s talking about, though I’m no judge when it comes to quantum science.”

Penny’s mouth twists up, not quite a smile. She doesn’t look up from her phone, sends a recording of one scientist’s lecture to another. Sophia Brown has a lot of recommendations to make.

“You have it on my authority that she absolutely knows what she’s talking about, Kayo. But no, actually, I wanted to be _much_ more superficial in my assessment. Do you suppose she…and Brains…?”

Kayo snorts.

“I don’t know. I always thought Brains liked Virgil, but he does seem weirdly synchronised with this girl. Maybe they are meant to be. Call me crazy, though, it just seems like the _safe_ choice.”

Penny’s eyes widen a fraction, still just half focused on her phone.

“I’m sorry, Brains and _Virgil_?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Kayo, I _very_ rarely get to see our darling Brains these days. His life and mine are on completely different ends of the scale. You will have to forgive me if I didn’t see that one coming. When did this start?”

“It hasn’t, really. I only started noticing recently, but Virgil’s _always_ down in the silos with Brains.”

“Surely just for work? Maintenance?”

“You’d think. I _did_ , but then I started to catch them just… _talking_. Oh, Penelope, you have to see it sometime. I don’t think either of them even realise. They stand so close they’re practically kissing.”

Penny lifts her eyes, trying to fight the smirk from her face.

“That sounds…”

“Crazy? Completely out of the blue? _Weirdly_ adorable?”

“All of the above, though I imagine I’d need to see them together to judge for myself. Goodness only knows when I’ll get the chance.”

“Mm.” Kayo says, leaning back in her seat. “Oh, have you actually seen Brains yet? I didn’t even get into Professor Moffat’s talk, it was full and I was _very_ distracted.”

“Oh really? What was he, out of ten?”

“A solid eight.”

“Splendid. And no, I’m yet to see Brains. I _was_ with Professor Moffat before the pair of you arrived, though, and she does have a certain Brains-like charm. Actually, I was rather hoping all four of us could meet, but, alas! I was drawn away.”

“Out of ten?”

“Oh, a dismal two. No, no, it was business. Though I think perhaps _he_ was hoping it’d turn into something else. Of course, I shut _that_ down quickly.” Penny sets down her phone, pulls out her compact, checks her lipstick. Snaps the compact shut, puts it back in her purse. “We ought to go and find them. They will be finished by now, won’t they?”

Kayo nods, and both young women get up out of their seats. Just a little self-conscious, Kayo adjusts her shirt, fingers twitching at the hem. Sophia Brown might not be as glamorous as Lady Penelope, but she still makes Kayo Kyrano look a bit plain.

-

Brains had, up to a point, felt a sense of tentative relief. Over recent months, he’s learned not to really let himself feel at ease until he can absolutely confirm everything’s gone to plan. Still, things had seemed alright. Moffie had done her presentation, the immediate responses had been overwhelmingly positive, and, as soon as she’d finished up on stage, she’d run right into his arms. This time, he’d just about managed to lift them in time, didn’t end up with them pinned to his sides, avoided his usual awkwardness. So things were going great, he’d hugged his friend back and then she’d dashed back on stage to grab her super-briefcase so they could take that back to the venue’s vault for safekeeping. Easy job, fingerprint scan in, drop-off, lock up, get the heck out of there to continue mingling and schmoozing and all the other things neither of them are particularly good at. Or keen on.

Then Moffie had said she’d needed a bathroom break. _No, Hiram, you absolutely_ cannot _go in there with me. I’ll be perfectly fine!_

She said that half an hour ago.

Brains has been waiting outside the ladies room looking lost and ridiculous for half an hour. He knows he absolutely cannot enter the ladies room. He knows he absolutely _must_ find out what’s happened to his lab partner/very best friend bar nothing and no-one, _definitely_. He’s already sent twenty five texts – one per minute after he’d hit the five minute mark. Half an hour is definitely _too_ long. He considers ringing Kayo and asking her to go and investigate. He _strongly_ considers it. His finger hovers over the call icon before he hears her voice and thinks, _huh? I didn’t even press call yet!_

“Brains! What are you doing?”

Kayo’s rushing past, pulling a slightly shorter young woman in _much_ higher heels along behind her. Brains thinks the young woman (black hair, beauty spot) looks faintly familiar, but he’s too stressed out to place her.

“Oh! Um- waiting? Moffie is—”

“Nope, no time.” Kayo says, and she grabs for his hand too. “You’ve got to come _now_. We’ve got a situation.”


	8. overly luminous hand wash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brains freaks out, his not-boyfriend comes to the rescue. moffie handles her own situation pretty well, all things considered.

These are the events that follow.

(They pass so quickly that Brains has trouble processing them at all – which is, in itself, worrying, because he’s never not been able to process a situation. He’s usually a pretty head-on-straight-guy, but the problem here is that what he considers to be his _whole world_ is in danger.

And -- It’s the words ‘whole world’ that destroy one heart. Then another.)

 

The event hall is in chaos. Projections go haywire, doors lock with people trapped inside, electric fixtures spark and fizzle, and roughly a third of the building is ripped apart entirely as an unstable device explodes, taking concrete and steel and plaster with it. No-one is sure, as of yet, if people have been taken along with the blast, too.

Team Symposium Attendees (head count: Brains, Kayo, and ‘Sophia’) rush to the danger zone, Scott Tracy Style, all speed; _hold on, we’re coming_. They go to the East side of the building, the _danger zone_ , where a gaping hole lets in wind and rain and terror. Little crowds of people gather in clusters, and Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward wastes no time reaching out to them, assessing the seriousness, still everything to lose. In her ear, her half-bearded bodyguard reports back from the opposite end of the crisis. They can handle the people.

Kayo and Brains make for a panel on the wall. It takes both of them to break into the system – she to force the wall open, he to force open the code. (Even in the height of panic, Brains still mutters a quiet _mujhe maaf karado_ to who/whatever might be listening. He does not like to break the law, not even for the Greater Good.) Kayo leaves him to patch through to Thunderbird Five, handing off control to someone who’ll be able to manage from above.

International Rescue is dispatched.

 

The Man With A Hologram For A Face had brought with him some backup, other players to mess up each level of the game. Each faceless henchman wears a hologram, and one of them wears Professor Moffat’s.

She does a poor job of acting ‘Professor Moffat’, and she does an even poorer job of acting _Moffie_ (though, awfully enough, it's not _that_ that is her downfall.) She lasts for all of twenty minutes before she is found out, but those twenty minutes have given The Man With A Hologram For A Face all the time he needs.

-

“So who _are_ you then? Who do you work for?”

The woman doesn’t respond. Parker cracks his knuckles. Lady Penelope raises her hand, a warning sidelong glance at her chauffeur. _No,_ _not yet._

“I think it’s pretty obvious who she’s working for.” Kayo says from her spot leant against the wall. She holds up her wrist communicator – Scott on the line. He’s in the building, helping evacuate hordes of dazed-and-confused scientists.

“We’re not going to get any more out of her.” Says Scott. Kayo nods. Scott tells them to get a move on. Kayo nods again, and Scott disappears.

“Ask her where Moffie is.” Brains whispers. The others ask him to speak up. He tries again, voice cracking halfway through her name. The woman scoffs. Parker cracks his knuckles again. Kayo takes a step forward. The woman flinches, jerks back in the seat she’s tied to.

“I don’t know,” she says. “He doesn’t tell us anything about what _he’s_ going to do. All he said to _me_ was that I had to keep you occupied. I don’t know what he did with the girl. Let me go.”

Penelope nods, unconvinced. “We’ll release you to the custody of the authorities. Thank you for your co-operation.”

Brains does not want to accept this. He stands up (he’d slid down against the wall, sat on the floor during the brief interrogation) and barely feels the way his nails dig into his palms. All he can think is that, even for that short amount of time – this woman had tricked him. She had come to him, pretending to be his dearest friend – _touched_ him, and he hadn’t realised. It had taken a _hologram malfunction_ for her cover to be blown.

“Where is she?” Brains asks, brows drawn right down, grim set to his mouth. “You _must_ know something. T-tell me.”

“T-t-tell you?” The woman sneers. “If I know my employer, he probably tied your girlfriend up in the East Wing, the side of the building he was planning on blowing up. She’s probably already been _blown to pieces_.”

 

There isn’t much time to think. Kayo can’t quite believe she’s holding _Brains_ , of all people, back from a physical confrontation.

-

The missing girl wakes up, head full of hurt, and she feels tiny and five-years-old, trapped in the woods behind her parents’ cottage, before it had become any kind of home to her.

She pauses, tries to think back. It’s dark in here, wherever _here_ is, and it’s not difficult to picture the last thing she saw. _Her own face_ , a twisted smile on _her own mouth_ , a sinister ‘ _good night, professor’_ in her own voice.

Her logical mind suggests she’d had some sort of hallucinogenic experience. Maybe something to do with the overly luminous hand wash in the ladies room. Her mum had always told her to be wary about public restrooms. Anyway. What she’d seen definitely _could not_ have happened, unless she’s got an identical twin she didn’t know about. Still, it doesn’t match up to the whole ‘tied up in an empty conference room’ thing.

She takes a moment to really get a feel for the situation. Her wrists are tied, but poorly, done in haste, probably based on the assumption that she wouldn’t wake up for a while – and when she _did_ , she wouldn’t be able to get out of the locked room. She makes short work of wriggling out of the plastic packing rope around her wrists. She’s _very_ experienced when it comes to forcing your hands through small gaps. She wore kids sized metal bangles ‘til she was twenty. It’s all in the displacement of your pinky knuckle. Childs play.

-

Brains storms off to go search the building himself. He can’t really see where he’s going, he’s kind of too busy scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeves and wondering why it is that he feels so very _twelve._ He’s thirty-one, this is ridiculous.

There’s a shudder. The building heaves. Some other crisis is happening, somewhere else in the building. He puts his glasses back on, thinks back to the building layouts he’s seen. Stops in the lobby, barely registers the very last of the people still filing out through the main doors.

“Brains!” Someone shouts. Brains barely registers this, too, right up until someone touches his arm and he realises that it’s Virgil that called his name. _Oh, that’s right_. _International Rescue is here to save the day._

“Hey,” Virgil says. “You okay?”

“No.” Brains says. And that’s it. That’s where he absolutely stops being able to make sounds at all. He _tries_ , he wants to explain, but his stupid, _stupid_ voice won’t work. It held on this long, but now the stutter’s nothing but a drawn out block of silence, while his fingers claw for purchase at the collar of his shirt and his head bows right down, chin-to-chest.

Virgil’s right hand is still just touching Brains’ arm, the rough scratch of Brains’ favoured tweed jacket under his fingers. With his other hand, he fumbles for contact of a different kind. Kayo answers his call and his questions, and as he listens, Virgil doesn’t let go.

Brains has his glasses off, and the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. The blue-framed spectacles have dropped from his fingers and onto the floor, knocked there when he raised his hands to his face, everything getting to him all at once. He does not move to pick them up.

Virgil’s bleeding heart can’t stand to hear Brains’s shuddering breaths without doing _something_ to help. But he flounders in the shallows of a half-a-foot distance, because Brains cannot be consoled the way Virgil’s brothers can, with light punch to the arm, or a joke, or a hug.

“We’ll find her. It’s going to be okay.” Virgil says, not as sure as he sounds.

Brains does not look up. His glasses wouldn’t help; iR’s engineer can’t see anything but the lovely Miss Moffat’s face. Pale, terrified, taken.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im the one who wears too small bangles. i am the one who can force their hands through tiny metal hoops. is it me.


	9. plain-old-giving-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SO SHORT, SO WANNA BE DONE WITH THIS. STILL GOT A WAYS TO GO. GONNA KEEP PLOWING ON.

They’re all still trying to clear the building before any more of it can fall away – and bits of it are falling away fast, parts just crumbling, plain-old-giving-up. This is bad. This building is important (historically, architecturally, scientifically) – and specifically; the _vault_ is important, (and someone should really be down there, but they can’t spare the people) and Brains is elbow-deep in the second wall of the day, stressing and _stressing_ the more he hears bad news, only half-focused on trying to make sure the whole structure they’re in isn’t about to implode and take half the city with it.

Scott calls in and says they need to hurry. Kayo calls in and says she still hasn’t found the Professor. Brains looks somewhere between livid and despairing. Both. He turns to Virgil, who’s been acting as a second pair of hands, surplus now that the GDF have stepped up with their people-carrier service. They’re both sat on the dusty, debris-littered floor, knees just touching. Working-on-saving-the-day-close.

“I’m going to find Moffie. The building is as good as gone.” Brains says, wrenching something out of the building’s guts and throwing it over his shoulder. “If a-anyone _should_ be able to find her…”

He withdraws his arm from the wall, wipes his hand on his trousers. Makes to stand up, but doesn’t. “I-if anyone should be able to find her- it’s me. Isn’t it? I’m supposed to be her- I’m supposed-- I’m going to find her.”

“Woah, what do you mean the building’s as good as gone?” Virgil asks. “Won’t that mean it’ll collapse?”

“Yes, well- possibly. It could also implode. Or explode. I haven’t- I mean, I can’t sit here and keep fiddling about rerouting things, I _need_ to find Moffie. Virgil- can you _not understand?_ She is everything to me. She is in danger because, like an _idiot_ , I e-encouraged her to come here. She had a bad feeling about it from the start, and I told her she ought to do it. Then _I_ had a bad feeling, and _I_ ignored it. I should have—” Brains’ head jerks, like he just got slapped, but resisted the impact. Its weird and wrong to see. Virgil leans forward, taking Brains’ hand in his, not even thinking. Brains doesn’t flinch, but something changes in his eyes. Virgil prays he’s not done the wrong thing.

“Brains, buddy, you gotta keep doing what you’re doing. You _need_ to buy the others time to find her. They’ll do it, I swear.”

This is the wrong thing to say, because it’s a complete untruth, because Scott and Kayo take that split second to report in – they’ve run into trouble of a different kind, and they are no longer searching. They _can’t_ , this problem is too big. No-one is searching for Professor Moffat. No-one is looking for Moffie. And as soon as Brains hears this, he jumps to his feet – Virgil is barely able to stop him. The building shudders again, for emphasis. Just to put that little bit more pressure on the situation. Virgil jerks his head toward the open wall panel.

“Brains.” He says. “ _Please_. I’ll go look for the Professor, just _stay here_ and don’t let the building collapse or blow up or _whatever_ with us still inside. Get John back on the line, have him play some calming music or something, just – please. I’ll find her, I _promise.”_

Brains looks like he’s going to argue, he really does, and Virgil can’t help but feel a little bit scared ‘til Brains sags and sighs and agrees. Virgil nods, turns for the door. Stops when he hears Brains say something else, just quiet, barely a sound at all.

“Please find her, Virgil. She’s my whole world.”

 

_Oh._


	10. girls hanging out of vents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let meeeeee entertain you! let me get to the end! i just have. i dunno. maybe 3 chapters to go? let's go with that! the ending will make all this dancing round our feelings worth it. i promise. (i hope)

So Virgil goes to look for the Professor, making for the places Scott and Kayo haven’t looked, and the number of those places is dwindling fast. He tries to stop the words _‘whole world’_ echoing around his head by clicking the imaginary ‘on’ switch on his mental boombox and trying to psycho-blast Brains’ voice out of his head using Queen songs. It works, mostly.

Okay. Looking for Professor Moffat.

Virgil does not know all that much about Professor Moffat. He knows she’s… a Professor. She works at the Supreme Hadron Collider – _did_ she and Brains end up renaming it the _Superlative_ Hadron Collider? She wears glasses and he saw her kiss Brains on the cheek and he doesn’t want to admit it but that was kind of _weird_ to watch, made him feel weird in the stomach and in the place behind his ribs where, at this point, he just about _knows_ he’s feeling something other than friendship/intellectual admiration for iR’s official engineer.

The next thing Virgil learns about Professor Moffat is that she wears a size five shoe, and she’s skinny, but not skinny enough to successfully worm her way out of a ventilation shaft.

He finds her half-hanging out of a vent opening, swearing up a storm and kicking her legs for all she’s worth. Her left shoe’s on the floor, and the right’s still on, but the heel of it has broken off.

Virgil coughs to get her attention, and she shrieks and kicks all the more.

“Woah! Woah! Relax. International Rescue, here to help. You…need a hand, there?”

She stops her flailing, and he hears a muffled _International Rescue?_ through the wall.

“Prove it!” She shouts, shrilly. “How do I know you’re really International Rescue and not some other bloody impostor going ‘round stealing faces and trussing me up?”

Virgil groans.

“How am I supposed to prove it? You don’t know me-- look, I promise I’m here to help. You really want to stay in the vent?”

The Professor is silent for a moment before Virgil hears a quiet ‘ _alright, you’re just going to have to trust him, Daydream.’_

“Go on then,” she says. “Haul my arse out of this vent already. But no funny business, alright? I’ve become quite the head-butting champion over the years, I warn you!”

So Virgil metaphorically rolls back his sleeves, and, as professionally as he is able, given her somewhat embarrassing position, he grabs a hold of Professor Moffat’s by the hips. In one less-than-elegant motion, he frees her from the hole in the wall. She makes an awkward landing on one broken shoe, but after reaching up and giving Virgil’s face a good tactile once-over, her face breaks into a grin, a truly relieved expression of _thank goodness for a friendly face_.

“You were the one with the big green plane, weren’t you?” She says, bending down to pick up her other shoe. Then she straightens up, looks at him sort of dreamily for a moment before something lights up behind her eyes and her face breaks into an even _bigger_ grin. “ _You’re the one who—“_ and then she stops herself. “You’re- Yes. The one with the big green plane. Correct?”

“Correct.” Virgil affirms, opting not to press her about whatever the realisation she’d clearly just had was about. “Now, c’mon. We need to get out of here.”

“No arguments there.” Moffie says, putting the other shoe on. The broken heel gives her an awkward limp, but Professor Moffat is not about to be seen walking around barefoot, no matter how dire the situation.

They walk for a little while, awkward silence broken only by the irregular clack of Moffie’s heels. (Heel.)

“So what’s your name then?” she asks. Virgil grunts around a sound that _could_ pass for his name. Moffie speeds up a little, closes the step between them, three strides to each one of his.

“Lovely to meet you, indistinct grunting. My name’s Daydream Sunshine.” She says, dashing forward a little so she’s ahead of him and sticking out her hand. Bemused, Virgil shakes it.

“It’s Virgil.” He says.

Moffie giggles. “I know.”

“Really, your name’s _Daydream Sunshine?_ ”

“My parents were hippies. Hiram calls me Moffie. It's only _very_ _slightly_ better, but please don't tell him I said so.”

Virgil releases her hand and she uses her forefinger to slide her glasses back up her nose. It’s just a little bit _Brains_ and it makes him feel guilty, for whatever reason. He’s not sure. That’s a weird one.

“So,” he says, grabbing her by the shoulder and nudging her in the proper direction when he realises they’re going the wrong way. “How’d you end up in that vent anyway?”

Moffie blushes. “Oh. It’s so silly. Very, very ridiculous of me. See, I woke up after having the most peculiar sort of experience – I saw myself, you see, and then…I knocked myself out.”

“Sounds like you met The Hood.”

“The who now?”

“The Hood – he’s… I guess he’s kind of becoming an Arch Nemesis of ours. Uses holo-tech to disguise himself, goes ‘round sabotaging things and making messes _we_ have to clean up. Still. Keeps us in business.”

“In _business!_ My, my, Mr. Virgil! My Hiram always assured me that International Rescue worked for free! I never knew you were so materialistically concerned! You’ll have me bankrupt for this rescue, no doubt!” Moffie slaps lightly at his arm, as if they’ve been friends forever. Weirdly enough, Virgil doesn’t even mind, but he can’t help being just that bit overly aware of the way she says ‘ _my_ Hiram.’ Still.

She explains the rest of the story (once she’s made sure she’s definitely not going to be charged for iR’s service today) as they duck and weave their way through the still-collapsing building. She tells Virgil how she’d woken up tied to a chair in a conference room, slipped her way out of her bonds, niftily picked the door lock with a hairpin _(‘Who still uses old fashioned locks?’_ She cries. _‘Well, it did sort of work in my favour.’_ ) and then she’d found herself in a corridor blocked off by debris. She’d gone for the vent as a last-ditch attempt and found it easy enough to wriggle through until she got herself blocked off by a fan and had to turn around. She’d only managed to do so by backing up on herself. _Ventilation shafts are really rather snug, Virgil, it was nearly impossible to properly turn around in there._ Then she’d kicked away a vent opening and attempted to wriggle right the way out, which catches her up to where Virgil comes into her story.

“I would absolutely have gotten out even if you _hadn’t_ shown up, though, my Knight in shining Kevlar.” She says. Virgil laughs, but before he can retort, his communicator crackles into life and Scott’s voice strains itself through the little speaker in Virgil’s toolbelt.

“Thunderbird Two, you find the Professor yet?”

“Yeah, I’m with her now.” (Moffie leans up to shout a quick _hello International Rescue!_ at Virgil's left pectoral.)

“Right, right, good. Can you get her to the vault? We’re gonna need her help. Quick as you can, guys.”

Virgil okays, signs off, turns to Moffie.

“Can you run?”

“Certainly not, not in these shoes!”

“You can’t just ditch them?”

“No!”

“Okay. Well, only one thing for it.”

And then it’s one piggy-back ride to the danger zone. Virgil thinks he might just be starting to understand why she could possibly be someone’s everything. She’s funny and sharp and softly, girlishly pretty, and if she weren’t so entangled with his crush – and if the whole ‘crush’ thing wasn’t a factor – ( _and_ if this wasn’t a completely inappropriate suggestion given the whole rescue situation) he’d probably want to ask her out to go get a milkshake and go swing dancing. She seems like that kind of a gal.

Well, bigger problems. And anyway, no matter how hard he tries to kid himself, there’s only one person he _really_ wants to take on a cheesy 1950s-style-diner date, and it’s not the daydream he’s carrying.


	11. crushed-soda-can-style

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> im just a-itchin to get myself to the end, so please bear with this. brains and virgil will interact again next chapter. just ONe more chapter after this, one more of everyone dancing round their feelings, confusing one another. here we go.

Virgil Tracy and Professor Moffat arrive on the scene in the middle of an Action Movie Sequence. Scott Tracy takes on Goons #1 through #4, and Kayo Kyrano performs some suitably Jet Li fight moves in her standoff against The Hood, who has shed his holograms and now presents his face in all its gaunt, pale glory. It’s not a pretty sight.

Virgil wastes no time in joining Brother Number One in his (not exactly losing but not exactly winning) battle, and Moffie spends a moment dithering before she hears a loud cry of _‘Professor, the Briefcase!’_ from Miss Kyrano, words coming out just as harsh as a particularly hard kick.

 _The briefcase? Ah, she means the gravitonic flask. The super-briefcase! Just where is it?_ One look over at the way Kayo gestures with a jerk of her chin and Moffie sees it. _Ah._

It’s right up on the top of a broken metal girder, several ladders-worth above their heads. How it got there – Moffie doesn’t want to think, and it’s a miracle the whole thing hasn’t exploded/imploded/whatever it might choose to do if it’s jostled that bit too much. It’s not exactly a _stable_ particle, and it’s not exactly in a very stable place, and Moffie’s stomach isn’t feeling all that stable looking up at it.

Right. So she needs to get it down. Sure, fine, she can do that. The strange bald man she assumes is The Hood (she’s not sure, after all, she was knocked out by what looked to be her own clone/twin/doppelganger) is suitably distracted by International Rescue. Professor Moffat only has to seize the moment.

 _Oh,_ she thinks, as she presses her back to the wall and sidesteps with great speed toward a ladder of rungs running up the wall nearest her objective. _Oh, I wish Hiram were here._

_I’d get him to do instead. I could always get him to do what I wanted._

So Moffie climbs the wall, but ruined shoes be damned! They can stay on the floor. Science is in danger. Professor Moffat must heed its call.

 

Down below, Scott sends Goon #2 reeling, and Virgil manages to duck in such a way that Goon #2 and #3 knock each other out. Goons #1 and #4 prove to be a little tougher. Silently, both Scott and Virgil thank Kayo for self-defence training.

Kayo herself is still locked in fisticuffs with Uncle Trangh, who keeps trying to make that ‘we’re family’ argument, and at this point, she’s so tired of him that she’s tempted to give in and put her ‘I’ll pretend to be on his side and destroy his organisation from the inside’ plan into action, not-even-half-baked as it is. Quarter baked. He’s got her that stressed.

She chooses the wrong moment to look up, and The Hood follows her gaze, sees the Professor inching her way across a metal girder, and goes absolutely _livid_.

“Stop her!” He shouts. The still conscious henchmen available all drop their fists and make for the ladder on the wall. Scott and Virgil dash after, and ‘Uncle Trangh’ gives Kayo a sinister smile and she fights back the urge to just knock him out then and there.

“I suppose you’ll come up with some sort of threat now, yeah?” Kayo says, clenching her fists as she sees the Professor do the same – her hand closing tight around the handle of the little black containment unit.

Everyone looks up when they hear the girl up above shout ‘ _hey!’_ and all good hearts leap to all good throats.

“You! Bald, scary man! Is this what you want?” Moffie shouts, shrill. She holds up the briefcase. She’s not sure, as of yet, just what she’s going to do from this point on, but she’s hoping inspiration will strike quickly. She wonders if her dear Hiram is going to come and help her out of this.

That’s his thing, at least with her. Not exactly one for just giving you the answer, served up all nice with a handy explanation on the side, he’d still get her to the solution, all while keeping his hands behind his back and out of the way. Reminded her of what she already knew. Oh.

(All he ever did was tell her she was smart enough to get there on her own.)

Moffie’s about to sit there and be really damn touched, but the vault and rest-of-the-room below her chooses that moment to lurch and split open and there’s a whole glowing hole of science just waiting for her to chuck the briefcase in and throw in her lot with a 50/50 chance of surviving, odds being _: 50% I survive, 50% I die_.

Down below, Virgil hisses a ‘ _what was that?’_ down the comm. Brains answers with a series of frustrated curses in his mother tongue, for faux-politeness’ sake before answering with a shrill _‘I may have miscalculated, what did that do?’_

“It broke that weird honeycomb vault open and your girlfriend is sat ten metres above it looking about one step from a mental breakdown.”

“ _What!?”_

“Brains, buddy, can you get down here?”

“I- I can’t, I’m patched in. I’m h-holding a flooded corridor shut with one hand and re-entering a rotating passcode to stop an entire floor blowing itself up with the other, so I’m r-really rather tied up here.”

There’s a pause, a crackle of static. Professor Moffat lifts the briefcase a little higher. The Hood says something, bur Virgil doesn’t hear it.

“Virgil,” Brains says, between breaths that sound more like colourful swear words. “Please, _please_ get her safe. I’m doing everything I can here. Global Defence is doing everything _it_ can. All I need you to do is get her, and yourself, and everyone else out, alright?”

Alright.

 

Then everything kind of goes crazy.

Professor Moffat makes the leap (throw) of faith. Scott uses her deliberating time to scale the wall and employ one Classic Scott Tracy Grapple Manoeuver, neatly swinging her out of harm’s way just as the honeycomb vault makes up its mind about how it’s going to react to Centurium 21.

(Moffie spends a dizzying thirty seconds in Scott’s arms, all the while her internal monologue screeching _I’ve killed us, I’ve killed us!_ Apart from that, it’s _thrilling.)_

She doesn’t kill anyone. Everyone watches, weirdly disappointed, to see the vault crumple in on itself, crushed-soda-can-style. Then they turn, and realise that The Hood has high tailed it. Kayo does not point out that she let him go. Then they turn back to the lump of metal.

They all just manage to clear the room before it decides it wants to _ex_ plode instead.


	12. playing mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uughhh i just want to get to the end. and we're close! next one is the end.

The dust settles, and International Rescue return Professor Moffat to safety. Virgil carefully sets her down (she’d insisted on being carried again, pointed down at her feet, ‘ _I’m only wearing stockings, after all!’_ ) when they reach the main foyer. He politely steps aside after that.

 

Team Cambridge Professor’s reunion is a moment with all the sound sucked out. Moffie, tip-toeing across the floor without her shoes, sees Brains waiting with an official looking GDF rep, just turned away. Virgil coughs, just a little bit of a helping hand, and iR’s lead engineer lifts his head, whipping ‘round to see.

Brains and Moffie close the distance between them in half a breath, half a second, colliding with each other in the middle of the room. They hug one another tightly, her arms around his neck, his arms around her waist. They knock each other’s glasses askew, fat tears blurring all four lenses, all eight eyes.

Their ‘ _I’m so glad you’re safe’_ s are just for each other, and no-one else can hear them. Moffie pulls back enough to press kisses to Brains’s face, dotting red across his cheeks and giggling as he protests, her arms still wound around him. Neither can see for crying. That hardly matters at all.

 

They don’t let go of each other, not even after the euphoria of being re-united has settled into a dim glow. Their hands stay firmly locked together all the way back home. They share a seat, talking with their heads bent together, just barely touching at the brow, and that’s how they stay for the whole flight over.

Virgil just catches a glimpse of them when he looks over his shoulder, and he tries really, _really_ hard to be okay with it.

-

It’s only just a day-and-a-half after the crisis is averted when iR receives a personal invitation from London, Lady Penelope calling. Such is the manner of a Lady of Leisure, and a job well done calls for a little celebration. She’s already invited the symposium’s guests, told them she’s a friend of Sophia Brown. Extended their nerd party into something just a little more stylish, opening up her shining Old English Manor as a backdrop for one last mixer, one last chance to pull their findings together.

International Rescue accept her invitation, everyone just a little puzzled by Penelope’s _P.S. Don’t worry about what you’ll wear. Come in anything. I have it sorted._

Penelope absolutely believes in keeping up appearances. She knows just what her title suggests, and she is perfectly happy to remain a vapid, materialistic blonde in the eyes of all that only admire her as a fashion icon and occasional runway model. She knows what she is worth.

There are certain things she really likes to indulge, though. She likes to shop. Her wardrobe is always well curated, the truly awful trends thrown out to make way for the next big thing, holding on only to what is sentimental. She doesn’t tend to buy for herself, though. She _really_ likes to shop for others.

It’s been that way forever – Penny remembers being six and knowing a boy of thirteen, rescued by her father from people who sought to use his brain for their own misdeeds. The boy’s skin was brown and his glasses were blue and he barely said two words to her in the whole year he lived under the Creighton-Ward roof. She remembers the first time he smiled, when she’d led him by the hand through a store and picked him out a sweater – cable knit and blue, too. She’d paid for it herself, standing up on tip-toes at the till, handing over a wad of freshly minted five pound notes from her fluffy kitten purse. She presented it to the boy, and the boy had thanked her with a grin and a hand sign (hand to chin, forward-and-down), mouthing his gratitude around a voice he still couldn’t make work right, and little Lady Penelope had understood, then, how it probably felt to be Father Christmas.

She still buys him sweaters, but now there is an entire wing of Creighton-Ward Manor devoted to acting as an extended wardrobe for all Tracy Villa’s occupants. Though Lady Penelope winces when she sees Gordon’s Hawaiian mockeries or Alan’s frightfully turn-of-the-century Tees, Penny nevertheless buys up everything she thinks they’d like. So she has rails and rails of Juicy Couture velvet tracksuits and a whole wardrobe full of nicely tailored, hopelessly grandpa-ish tweed. She’s got shirts and sweaters to fit broad shoulders and tall frames, shoes and ties for every possible outfit combination.

And yet she feels so frivolous, wondering if Jeff Tracy’s noble, strange, wonderful family would think her too forward. She sometimes gives them the things she’s bought as presents, just one or two things at a time, never lets on that she fancies herself their personal shopper, never shows them just how much she thinks of  them. She resolves, every time she passes the Walk-In-Wardrobe’s grand doors, to give them everything, present them with years’ worth of fashion finds, but in the light of the day, she’s embarrassed, and doesn’t – because in the light of day, she’s less Lady. More Penny. Feels weirdly like they won’t accept, so she doesn’t extend her lavish gift.

Today, she comes close. She goes to each guest room (their own, Jeff’s family have always had their own rooms in her Father’s house) and lays out an ensemble for each of them, spreading out floral shirts and neatly pressed trousers with shoes left paired up at the foot of each bed. It’s fun, playing Mother, like her own mother used to, and she lets her fingers linger against the fabric of the suit she picked for Scott, picturing him, all blue-eyed and dashing in it.

She finishes with plenty of time to spare, more than enough to get herself ready three times over (which she will do.)

-

When Penelope’s guests-of-honour arrive, (VIPs always come early) Miss Moffat finds even she’s been given a gift – a flustered flush colours her cheeks when she enters her guest room and finds a dress laid out for her – a black and white pencil dress, knee length, cap sleeved and round collared, just a little bit ‘mod’. It’s perfect, delightfully _retro_ with black suede heels to match, and Moffie almost knocks her dear Hiram over in the wide hallway as she dashes to find the lovely Lady Penelope to thank her, clutching Penelope’s note (official pink rose letter-paper) in delicate fingers.

Brains agreeably waves off her fly-by apology, and makes it another few steps down the hallway before he comes into a soft almost-collision with Virgil. Virgil, who’s been odd and quiet ever since the symposium fiasco. Brains only notices then, the gap. He’d been so distracted, showing an old friend around a home all new to her, distracted by her black hair and brown eyes and colour red, he’d almost missed that other person, with his different black hair and brown eyes and colour red.

“Virgil!” Brains says, lost for anything else to say. “I – hello.  Are you- um. Are you excited for tonight’s... For tonight?”

Virgil shrugs. “Sure. Lady  P definitely knows how to throw a party, so I’m sure this’ll be a night to remember. I was just with Gordon, he’s geeking out about what she bought him. I have never seen a guy more excited about a floral print suit before.”

“Well, that sounds…particularly in character, for Gordon. I’m not so sure about the party, b-but I suppose Moffie seems excited enough, and i-it is really for her and the other scientists who presented, so I ought to at least t-try and be pleased about it, at least for her sake!” Brains says, fingers twitching at the corner of his glasses, an unnecessary adjustment.

Virgil shifts his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, and thinks, _right, right. Time for my Han Solo on Endor moment._

“Oh, yeah. You- Well, you make a nice couple. I’m real happy for you.”

Then he walks away, taking just slightly bigger strides than usual, not even bothering to look back when he just about hears Brains say - _'wait!'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this concerns some headcanons sent to me on tumblr, you can read 'em here! http://obscenelybefuddled.tumblr.com/post/128181445246/brains-penny-headcanons-by-missy-poppins91


	13. feelings of a romantic nature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aaaaghhh, it is over! we are free! thank you for reading this fic, if you did get all the way to the end. this is the first chaptered thing i've ever managed to complete!

It’s a party, and Brains laments his nature. Cowards are safe, and never take risks with their hearts. After everything, after _everything_ that the past few days had thrown at him, he still can’t work up the nerve. Even during their brief corridor meeting just hours ago, Brains hadn’t managed even to clear up the confusion about his 'girlfriend'.

Still. It’s a party. It’s a party, and Moffie has had a hold of his elbow the whole time so far – to keep herself grounded, more than to ground him. She’s still rattled. Kidnappings tend to do that. Brains can forgive her for going all limpet-style on his arm. He’s grateful, honestly. It’d be dismal to spend the evening alone, hoping to blend in with the wall.

“Do you really think,” Moffie starts, “that you haven’t got a chance with him?”

 _Him_ , that’s _Virgi_ l, who Brains is trying very hard not to look at. Brains shrugs, non-committal, not sure, not-going-to-think-about-it. Moffie purses her lips, pulls lipstick inward to a thin red line. Brains can almost see the critical analysis playing in the cinema screen behind his lovely lab partner’s eyes, but he doesn’t want to hear the words that are going to come out of her mouth. _Oh you_ are _good enough. Oh but you’ll never know if you don’t try!_

 _I don’t want to know!_ Brains thinks, clammy hands twisting his tie. _I’d rather never know._ Better to live in blissful ignorance – even as his head _and_ his heart ache to be sure.

Brains-and-Moffie watch, ever wallflowers, as the party spins on. Gordon’s stepping on Lady Penelope’s toes, but she shakes her head, rolls her eyes – eyes that so clearly _adore_ him – and anyone within a five mile radius can tell that Gordon Tracy is doing just fine.

Scott twirls Kayo, his eyes lingering on the swirl of Penelope’s cream-silk-skirt. Parker dances; stiff and awkward, with Grandma Tracy; who looks like she’s going to boogie on right out of her dress. If our wallflowers were just a little closer, they’d hear her giggle and call Aloysius Parker _young man_ , though in fairness, to her, he really is. And if our wallflowers were just a little closer - they wouldn’t _want_ to hear the other things Grandma whispers.

Virgil is dancing with someone neither Brains nor Moffie recognises; a pretty girl, dark haired and dark eyed and _beautiful_ , and just the sight of the pair makes Brains wilt all the more. Moffie sighs, loud and deliberate. The song ends, and Virgil politely extricates himself from the grip of the girl’s hands. Miss Moffat decides to set her half-formed plan into action.

“I’m going to dance with your would-be man, Hiram, goodbye.” She says, patting Brains on the arm as she lets go, slipping through the crowd before he can protest. (He does protest, but she’s already halfway to the target and she’s not hearing his stammering ‘please stops’ on purpose.)

“Hello,” She says, when she’s close enough. “May I have this dance?”

Virgil’s broad shoulders stiffen, and Moffie doesn’t miss the brief look of _gee, I really wanted to talk to someone_ , but he smooths his expression out like he does his shirt and nods, mouth curving into a smile when he sees Moffie wink. She waves her hand, a sneaky point of a finger back towards the blue-boy they’re both so fond of.

“We have him in common,” Moffie says, setting her hand on Virgil’s shoulder as the music starts to play. “Right?”

Virgil swallows around a ‘yes’, and opts just to nod, feeble and not at all like himself.

“Wrong,” Moffie assures him, looking up, pointedly, over the frames of her glasses. “Or at least, I hope you don’t feel for him the way I do, because I’m afraid that just won’t do.”

“I, um. Huh?” Virgil manages. Moffie smiles, neatly guiding him out of the way of a much merrier pair of dancers.

“I hold no romantic feelings for Hiram, and he has none for me. I realise what it probably _looks_ like, but I’ll come clean now as a terrible flirt. Really, I’m awful.” She says, batting her lashes. “I can’t think of any way to dance around this, so I’m just going to ask you straight out – _do_ you like him?”

Virgil pouts. “This is all so _high school_ ,” he deflects. “All this ‘do you like him’ stuff. Seriously.”

“But _do_ you?” Moffie presses the question, squeezing his hand tightly for emphasis.

Virgil grimaces, stares hard at his shoes and nods again. He chances a look up into Moffie’s eyes and doesn’t know just what to make of her grin. He’s known her for a grand total of maybe five hours, and he already knows this tiny, skinny girl is a force to be reckoned with.

(She held her own against The Hood, after all, reckless though her action-of-faith had been. She’d still made the decision that saved something powerful from falling into the wrong hands. What’s Virgil Tracy to Professor Moffat, now? Just another personal taxi service.)

“That’s all I needed to know. Please have no false impressions about me and Hiram. I love him terribly, but not…like that. Not like, the way I think _you_ maybe _want_ to? So all I’m saying is _do right by him_. He means the world to me.” _Means the world – that again,_ Virgil thinks.

“Now, do you know how to dip a lady? We have to finish this dance properly, and then I’ll let you go.” Moffie says, winking. Virgil goes for something standard, hoping not to drop her. Despite his inexperience, they manage to make it look fairly elegant. Miss Moffat does the hard work, of course. Then, with one last fond look, she disappears into the thinning crowd, and Virgil makes his escape.

-

It’s a bit of jostling through the crowd before Virgil finds himself on one of the balconies, looking out across the sprawling Creighton-Ward Manor grounds.

 _Do right by him_? What was _that_ supposed to mean? Did the Professor expect him to just go out there and bare all his feelings, wham-bam-crushing rejection imminent? He’s pretty sure Brains is freaked out by him, at this point. He came on too strong, totally uncool during the whole rescue situation. Hugely unprofessional.

Before he can worry himself further, Brains himself comes stumbling onto the scene, and Virgil turns around just in time to see Professor Moffat dashing away. Brains, frowning like a kid who’s just been told off, marches over and drapes himself over the balcony, back to the party, fingers tight around the railing, and, having found himself a spot to stay firmly within, he turns his head. Looks up at Virgil.

“Virgil,” he starts. “Hello. Lovely to see you this evening. I- You know, we have known each other for many years now. I- I—” he stops. “Oh, this is absolutely _ridiculous_ \- I feel I really must- No. Sorry, let me start again.”

He takes a theatrically deep breath, releases it, and tries again – but this time he doesn’t look at Virgil.

“I have s-something of a- confession to make.”

Crushing rejection, here it comes. Virgil inches just a little further back. Brains doesn’t notice.

“It’s just- It has come to my attention—well- I _thought_ —because I tend to have to m-make the first move if I want to speak to you or any of your family members—that is— It’s rare that any of you come to speak to me first, outside of ‘International Rescue’. So I suppose I thought—or, I h-had _hoped_ that when you s-started to spend more time in the underground levels that you m-might have enjoyed my company. And, well—”

Virgil’s heart’s going a little nuts. He’s still not _totally_ sure what Brains is getting at, but, well, we’ll call the increased pulse tentative hope.

“—I was very glad of it! Company. I mean— not because it was just _anyone_ , b-but because it was _you_. Specifically.”

Brains looks like he’s going to faint. He’s gone very pale. Virgil very badly wants to make this better, but he kind of. Can’t move. He can’t move, or really think, and Brains is still baring his soul.

“And then—with the symposium – I th-thought, I mean- after the way I acted, I thought you couldn’t _possibly_ feel what _-_ but- you see—”

Brains stops, swallows hard around the fear and the stutter in his throat. Virgil does the same.

“I know it’s unprofessional, possibly worthy of me tendering my resignation but- well- I feel I may have developed- um.”

Another pause. _Both_ of them are ready to faint.

 _“_ I may have developed _feelings_. For, um. You. Of a… _romantic_ nature.”

 

Well, there it is. Virgil’s brain grinds to a halt. He doesn’t say anything. Brains takes this as an Extremely Bad Sign, and immediately goes into a panic-laced spiel filled with apologies and ‘I r-really wasn’t ever going to tell you’s, _Moffie bullied it out of me- pain of_ death _, Virgil, you understand, she knows a lot about microbes, I feel she really could kill me if she wanted to—_

“Woah, _woah_. Cool your jets, Brains.” Virgil says, backing up on his step back. (He takes a step forwards.) “Me too. Me too but like, about you, I mean.”

Then there’s this weird pause where they both just… look at each other. Brains’ mouth hangs just slightly open with shock.

“S-sorry, did I hear that correctly?” Brains manages, voice about an octave too high. Virgil laughs, a one-breath guffaw, loud and stupid and it makes him _feel_ loud and stupid but _who cares_ , because Brains has ‘feelings of a romantic nature’ for him.

“Wait, so…what about the _whole world_ , thing? I- I thought you and the Professor...?” Virgil asks, trailing off, awkward, hating that it comes up, yet again. Brains' face cycles through looks of confusion to shock to understanding to careful, deliberate thoughtfulness before an invisible lightbulb switches on and he grins.

“No, no no." Brains says, getting to the right conclusion, holding up his hands, his gesture of _'don't panic'_. "I- I will tell you sometime, what I meant. Just- It takes more than one planet to make a s-solar system. And I- I can absolutely have more than one ‘whole world’.”

They both laugh, giddy ridiculousness bubbling up in their chests as they each take another tiny step closer into the little bit of space between them.

-

Back on the dance floor, Moffie finds herself a new partner. The tall dark-haired, dark-eyed girl Virgil was dancing with before. The girl knows a few samba steps, but Moffie’s never been one for latin - she prefers the Viennese Waltz. Still, they move to the beat, and the girl’s hands feel nice, fingers threaded through Moffie’s own. The girl is a radiation specialist, and Moffie thinks – _brains_ and _beauty!_ _You might just be perfect._

Elsewhere, a _very_ drunk Grandma Tracy gropes Aloysius Parker’s behind. Gordon spills the punch-bowl over Scott, laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the universe. Alan and Kayo do the Macarena. Lady Penelope pours herself a drink, since her butler is occupied. The other party guests fill the rest of the space, and Brains and Virgil stay on the balcony.

They sit on the stone tiles, backs to the railing, hands just touching, Virgil’s little finger looped around Brains’ - and that’s all they need, at least, for now. They talk. They talk about 'whole worlds' and old worlds and new worlds and all the things they've done and chosen. They talk, and it’s not nearly as different as either of them expected it to be. In a good way – this is pretty damn good. It’s their weird ‘lying-on-the-lab-floor’ brand of normal, still new, still not _quite_ normal, but getting there. Everything is going to be okay.

 

The night’s growing late. The party spins on.


End file.
